Log Cabin Quilt – Quilting my way through Quarantine

January 5, 2021
Rossie
Finished, Portfolio, Quilting, Quilts

The Original Plan

When last I wrote about this Log Cabin Quilt, I was planning a quilt of mostly solids with a cheerful 1950s palette (see that post here). Well, when I got to making I found that I needed to change course…this quilt went from putting abstract design idea first, to putting feelings and meditations first.

The plan changed reflect our quarantined lives.

It was April of 2020, and my family was in their 20-something day of quarantine. I wanted the quilt to be a document about that time. Sure, log cabins have those good red centers—symbolizing the physical and symbolic warmth of a family hearth—but looking at my fabrics I saw that I could easily do more. I started making a block every day, choosing fabrics that represented some aspect of our life in quarantine:

hikes on our land
games we were playing
Netflix we were watching
Our pet goats
All the eggs our chickens were laying

On instagram, I documented each block as I made them. You can find them on my account

I quickly had a quilt top.

I kept the quilt blocks up on my design wall as I made them, so I was able to check the the fabrics weren’t too wacky together, but the palette isn’t tight or thought out. It is what it is, right? Making do felt good. And honestly, I have a large stash and I bought 1 piece of fabric (featuring trucks, for our truck-loving kid) and a friend sent me chicken fabric (thanks again, Sarah!)

By the end of May, day 70 of our quarantine, I had a twin-sized quilt top.

I sent it out for quilting.

My friend Kathy of Threadbear Quilting quilted this for me. I had committed to filming for a quilting TV show, and there was a fair amount of prep to do beforehand. Having the top quilted by a professional was an easy way to take some work off my plate—and I didn’t feel that it needed my eye, specifically, to quilt it. Sometimes I do think my specific stitches are needed, but in this case, a simple pantograph felt right.

I bound it up!

I bound it with a rainbows and clouds print that seemed to tie together all my mixed feelings about quarantining. It feels necessary and good, but also hard and exhausting. It is clouds and rainbows.